


Aftermath

by jumbi



Series: Filling the Void [15]
Category: Super Paper Mario (Game)
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, pregame, the three of them are Doing Really Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-07 22:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21225164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumbi/pseuds/jumbi
Summary: our trio of heroes has survived the most harrowing world they've encountered yet, but now the future is uncertain.





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> this short scene takes place in my larger comic story "filling the void". it takes place directly after scene 84 (in which our three heroes escape douma and land in a much safer world, but the count is still dying).

The beeping was like a constant tiny hammer on the back of her head.

She’d never seen anything like this. Nastasia had learned about electricity and technology over their travels, but she’d never been inside a building that felt like it was, in itself, a big machine. The distant but pervasive thrumming, the device ticking off each heartbeat. The clean, curved plastic casings and clean floors. The thin clear tubes stuck to his forearms. She perched on a chair next to the window, looking through the half-open blinds out over a courtyard that may have been cheerful in brighter weather. But for now, the grounds lay as dormant and washed-out as the Count.

Just over the white noise, she could hear O’Chunks and one of the doctors - nurses? - talking softly. It was easy, to let the conversation fade behind the heart monitor, but she forced herself to pay attention. They were talking about him.

“How good is a, eh, Ultra Shroom compared teh th’normal variety?” O’Chunks was straining to keep his voice low.

Nastasia glanced toward the two of them, turning her head almost imperceptibly. The nurse was a tall, pale, slender creature, with long padded fingers tapping a thin pen against a screen shaped like a clipboard.

“It heals all injuries,” the nurse replied. “But he still has to stay here. It doesn’t heal dehydration.”

“But ‘e’ll be good t’go, soon?” Nastasia’s insides turned at the tiny, weak hope in his voice.

The creature made a clicking noise. “I don’t know anything about his species, so it’s hard to tell, but your doctor wrote in her notes here that he’s fried… Oh, that explains it.”

“Fried?”

A pause. Nastasia could just make out their reflections in the window, murky as they were through the thin coat of drizzling rainwater. The nurse looked up from his clipboard. “I couldn’t figure out why he had so much trouble taking the heal,” he blinked, once, taking his time. “But his magic is tied to _everything_, isn’t it? Arcane-based. No wonder he couldn’t eat properly.”

“What is fried?” O’Chunks pressed, worry creeping into his voice despite his efforts.

“When a caster far overexerts their abilities, it can break the part of them that generates their F.P. Usually they just die, but with help they can survive…” The nurse drew his brows together and looked at the Count as if to ask “_what did he try to do?_”, but when neither of them clarified, he continued. “After becoming fried, if a caster tries to access their F.P., such as by casting a spell, it will injure them.”

Nastasia’s breathing hitched. She really, really didn’t want to hear the answer to the question she knew O’Chunks would ask next. But ask he did.

“How long does it take teh heal?”

“It doesn’t.”

She flinched.

The nurse continued with only a small pause, perhaps at O’Chunks’ expression. “There are some ways to alleviate-“

The Count jerked abruptly, setting the beeping off-rhythm. More blood trickled from his nose and mouth as he tossed his head from side to side. The nurse hustled over to the monitors and touched the screens a few times with those odd, padded fingers. The Count stopped moving, sweat dampening his forehead as he panted and grimaced. After a moment, the bleeding stopped, and he looked to be less painfully asleep.

“Um, what was that?” the nurse asked, when it was over.

Nastasia sighed, her cold breath fogging up the window. “He casts spells in his sleep sometimes.”

The nurse paused. “He’s going to be in a lot of trouble if that happens often.” He narrowed his pale eyes thoughtfully at his clipboard, tapping the screen a few more times with the pen. “It’s _imperative_ that your mage doesn’t cast any spells. His magic reservoir is tied to too many things. If he zaps himself, he won’t be able to walk, or talk, or see. Or eat, which he will need to do, if he wants to recover his strength after exerting himself at all. He definitely isn’t a candidate for your adventure party anymore.”

O’Chunks said nothing.

“I’ve given him painkillers to make him more comfortable, for now, and I’ll see about digging up something more long-term that can prevent him from casting in his sleep,” he continued. “Moving forward, he can't eat anything harder to digest than toast or crackers. I can find a chart of tonics that will temporarily boost his magic so he can handle eating. And I’ll get a list of common vitamins for casters…” He turned to step out of their tiny room.

“Get him another blanket,” Nastasia mumbled without looking away from the window. The nurse stopped, but didn’t say anything else before he left.

Her eyes drifted to the Count’s blood-soaked clothes, hanging off the wall in her corner of the room. She bit at her lip, unable to look away.

O’Chunks sighed as he settled his weight against the wall next to her chair and sank to the floor, stretching out his knees. “We have t’just throw them out, Nassy. They’re ruined.”

She shook her head. “We just have to wait for him to wake up.”

O’Chunks grunted, but didn’t argue. Nastasia gritted her teeth and rested her forehead in her fists against the windowsill. The Count wouldn’t be cleaning any clothes, now. He wouldn’t be fixing their pots or their tent. No lights to guide them at night, no casual effects here and there for their convenience or comfort. There would be no way to avoid frequent stops at towns for resupplies. Their safety would always be at more risk. She had ruined him.

The tears were just audible over the gentle misty rain as they hit the windowsill. That was the only sound, for a while, interrupted only by the heartbeat monitor.

“I-I want to try to clean them,” she said, eventually. “A-and the skirt. I don’t think… I don’t think we can replace that.”

O’Chunks leaned his head back against the wall and tugged at his beard. He still hadn’t stolen a moment to clean up. He had insisted she take that agonizing first period of waiting time to put on an undamaged shirt, that he would keep watch while she washed her hair. It had been a kindness, to let her keep herself busy for a few minutes, but now a distractible shard of her couldn’t help but disapprove of how dirty he was compared to the rest of the room.

He took a deep, slow breath. “He needed a new bag anyhow. Don’t worry ‘bout tha’ one. Th’rest… Methinks they clean up blood ‘ere a lot, if’n yeh wanna give it a go.”

The heart monitor changed its rhythm, so Nastasia and O’Chunks turned their attention toward the Count. He hadn’t moved except to open his dull, near-colorless eyes. He must have heard them talking. His gaze slid lazily over to the window and came to rest on the two of them. Nastasia cleared her throat and stood abruptly. She stiffly grabbed up his clothes in her arms and marched out of the room, leaving O’Chunks half-curled up against the wall.

…

O’Chunks squinted his eyes closed and cursed internally. They were going to have to tell the Count what had happened to him. They were going to have to tell the Count what had happened to him _more than once_.

“’Ey, Count,” he began. His throat felt too dry to give the full lecture. The Count was drugged anyway, his eyes glazed over and uncomprehending, but O’Chunks hoped that even a little information might start getting through if he brought it up as soon as possible. “Th’doctors here did a number on yeh. We were real worried, fer a bit, but yeh pulled through, yeah?”

He fussed over his fingernails. “Uh, so, th’nurse here said ye’hre fried…” The corners of his mouth tugged erratically as he wrestled to get himself under control. Stars above, he was holding it together even worse than Nassy. “… So yeh cannae… cast spells, anymore.” He looked up from his muddy fingers at the Count.

The Count only stared at him for a moment longer, and then closed his eyes again. That could have gone worse.

But the scene was _distressingly_ familiar. The lad had barely survived, permanently injured, after such a betrayal… Utterly alone. There was nothing that had made him feel better, at his lowest, and there was certainly nothing they could do to make the Count feel better now. He could only hope the Count would learn to adjust, with time. He stared down at his hands, propped limply against his knees, but couldn’t find it in himself to pick at his fingernails again. The room was big enough for two beds, but somehow the walls were pressing in against him.

In desperation he cast his eye wildly around the room. There- in the top corner- a television propped in a harness. The moving image was incomprehensible for a moment, but he forced himself to blink and focus in on the program. Good thing no one had come in and caught him gawking like a suffocating fish at the tiny screen.

It was some kind of sports game. If he squinted, he could just catch the flashes of captioned commentary… Jousting, that was the word that kept coming up. The image was disorienting, but it only took him a moment to start making out the giant colorful birds draped in glittering cloth, ridden by relatively tiny creatures with lances. That was something to start with.

He glanced at the Count. At the inns, they had liked to find the sports games on each world. It had become a game of its own to try and guess the rules before the end. This one would have been really exciting… Tiny dark spots flashed around between the birds, and when the camera angle changed O’Chunks realized that they must be flying the cameras between the players in the arena. What a show.

He wondered if the Count would ever want to play games with them again, or spend time around them at all. He couldn’t imagine sitting down at the dinner table next to the man who had taken everything from him. And, alas, Nassy… How would she adjust to the coming change? Was there anything he could do about that at all?

The room still felt so cramped, but O’Chunks felt so small. The heart monitor continued, uninterrupted.


End file.
